Monday, November 06, 2017

Anyone who knows anything about our family knows that my
mother was born in South Dakota. Mom’s
great-grandfather, Michael Ryman came to Dakota Territory in the early 1880’s
and settled near the town of Warner just a few miles south of Aberdeen in
Brown County. When the Ryman’s arrived, Aberdeen was little
more than a train stop.

I am reading a book by David Laskin called The Children’s Blizzard that tells the
true story of one of the most unexpected blizzards in American history. It took place in 1888 and hit the Dakotas
especially hard. Laskin tells that the
family of L. Frank Baum, who wrote The
Wizard of Oz, moved to a farm just a few miles above Aberdeen and Baum
lived there in the early 1800s when the Rymans arrived. For a while Baum tried his hand at a variety
of stores in Aberdeen and failed miserably before eventually moving to Chicago
where he wrote his famous book.

Everyone who has ever seen the movie of The Wizard of Oz remembers the line where Dorothy says, “I don’t
think we’re in Kansas anymore.” The funny
thing is that Baum himself had never ever been to Kansas. The descriptions that he made of Kansas in
the book actually were memories that he had written about Brown County in the
summer of 1888, “Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country
that reached the edge of the sky in all directions. The sun had baked the plowed
land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it. Even the grass
was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of the log blades until they
were the same gray color to be seen everywhere.” What he was describing wasn’t Kansas but the
neighborhood of our Ryman ancestors.
That is something to think about the next time I watch The Wizard of Oz.

Thursday, September 28, 2017

I've been trying to work on this story for a while and it just doesn't seem to want to go anywhere...though it seems like it should. So in the tradition of crowd sourcing, I am family sourcing. If you have time to read through what I've started (which, granted, isn't much) here is what I'd like help with. (1) Do you think it is worth working on further or do you think I should just cut my losses and try something else. (2) What are your thoughts about the direction the story should take? In other words, what do you think comes next. I'd like your ideas. I'm also open for any editorial suggestions about what is already here.

Story

John woke, opened his eyes and
wondered who he was going to be today.
Light creeping in around the shades revealed that the old wooden clock
on the wall was still there and as his eyes created shape from the darkness he
recognized everything in the place where it had been when he’d closed his
eyes. The open closet with his clothes
on hangers below the wall clock and the book shelves that his son had built for
him years ago in the indented space beside it where his eyes rested as he lay
in bed were still there. So, when he
turned his head, were the dresser and the dilapidated plant shelf that he
brought in for the winter.

The difference was rarely anything
he could spot immediately, though for a series of days, he had woken to realize
that he was living in a foreign country and, for another stretch of time, that
the president of the United States was also the Grandmaster of the KKK. Most of
the time, though, it took him awhile to figure out what was different. One day, he had the constant memory of having
taught at a school where records of his employment revealed that he had
actually never worked. Another time in
conversation with his wife, he was referring to an episode from his childhood where
his parents had taken him to Yosemite, only to
have his wife remind him that this memory was from a story he had written and
had not actually ever occurred. Today,
was more like that. At first light, there was no crack in the cosmos.

**

John went into the kitchen and
grabbed a mug off of the rack of cups on the counter. It was glossy and black with white letters
saying, DRINK ME,” a joke gift from his daughter who’d picked it up in the
airport on one of their excursions, Dubai or Florence maybe.

“This is
for you – for first thing in the morning,” she’d said. It wasn’t because of a reputation for being
an early morning grouch. In fact, John was more of an early riser, but at one
point he had tried explaining to her his sensations of never waking up the same
person. The cup was her faux solution. “Strong black coffee, first thing, will bring
you back to reality.”

John liked
to think of the cup in another way. He
imagined all of the images and ideas in his head swirling around, the rush that
seemed to change from day to day, sometimes from moment to moment even on those
days when everything seemed outwardly banal.
Despite the amount of writing that his work required of him he could
never make the ideas come out in any rational form on the printed page in ways that
were not stiff and clichéd. Attempts to verbally explain what he was trying to
sort out were even more hopeless. He
felt as though the words pouring out of his mouth were those of a ten-year old. The command of the bold white letters on the cup’s
black background made him fantasize that the swirling black liquid he drank
were all those thoughts, and when he took in their deep caffeine there would be
not only that easing of the muscles and loosening of mental clouds, but a kind
of clarification distilled in his mind by the hot liquid.

When John
turned back towards the table from filling his coffee cup, a man was sitting at
the kitchen table. His hair was gray and straggly, his face nearly round. The aura he gave off was of a man out of his
time. He was dressed as though ready to
play a part in a nineteenth century biopic of the American mid-west, but what
he wore was clearly not costume. It was his everyday clothing. John was used to
slight shifts in the fabric of his world, but this was unusual. He knew instantly, though, that this was
someone to whom he was related.

“You got
more of that coffee?” the man asked.

**

John
reached over and grabbed a mug off of the tree.
He opened the top of the Keurig and popped in an innocuous morning blend
and pressed the button. When the brown
liquid finished pouring out, he turned back around and handed it to his
visitor. “I guess I’m supposed to know who you are.”

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

As most of you know my daughter Maya is getting married in September - September 9 to be specific. In the spirit of George Santayana admonition, "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it" she has been thinking about thinking ahead about how going into this marriage will be different different from the first and posted the following blog in her Lilies and Elephants forum.

Yesterday, July 10th, was my former wedding anniversary. Thirteen years
ago I walked down the aisle in a ballgown dress with six bridesmaids,
seven groomsman, and approximately 200 guests. The wedding was fabulous.
Basically my entire family on both sides flew in from out of town, some
for whom I know it was a stretch time wise and financially. It meant
the world to me, truly. The room was filled with people we'd each known
over the past 24 years, many that we hadn't seen in years. It was a
grand scale event that I became so wrapped up in planning that, in
hindsight, I realized I was more focused on the wedding itself than the
next 50 or so years of married life ahead. But at 24 years old and one
of the first of my friends to get married, that's what I did.

I think I knew, or at least had a nagging feeling, walking down the
aisle that I was making a mistake. But I'm a dreamer, with my head often
in the stars, and I thought I was being unrealistic wanting more than I
had - a good-hearted, steady, reliable man who loved me and wanted to
spend his life with me. I thought it should be enough. As it turns out,
it was not. We were not, as a couple. Had it, no doubt my life would be
drastically different than it is today. There are moments when I think
about how my life changed course on January 24, 2007, the day we decided
to split. But I have no regrets. It was the best decision for us both. I
believed it then, and I haven't doubted it a day since.

In part, I think I simply wasn't ready for any of it. Some people know
exactly who they are and what they want at 24 years old. I was not one
of those people. I didn't realize that at the time, of course - I took
the route I always expected I would. College, full time job, grad
school, marriage, house, plan for a family. It wasn't until the "plan
for a family" part began that I realized how unready for this life I
was. It's funny how one day you can wake up and discover "this is really
going to be the rest of my life if I do nothing about it right now."
You'd think vows such as "for as long as we both shall live" said in
front of 200 people including a priest would do that. But for whatever
reasons, it didn't. It was the startling realization that I could be
someone's mother, that if we had a child he would always be their
father, and that we'd be inextricably tied forever in that way, no
matter what else happened in our lives, individually and as a couple.
It occurred to me then how little we'd talked about the details, the
actual realities instead of the "one day"s. It felt almost like a
reverse Truman Show - like a story that I played a part in, and
suddenly it became clear that it was my life. We had moved along the
path in front of us. We had never questioned if it was the path we
should be following.

Today, I'm just under two months from my wedding (it's two months from
this past Sunday, but who's counting). I am almost 38 years old and have
lived a lot of life since my last wedding. I know it's given me
experience. I believe, or at least hope, it's given me wisdom. Now, my
fiance and I talk about the little details, plan for the actualities of
the future. Things as minor as interrupting our (very food motivated)
dog while she's eating, playfully tugging at her ears and tail to make
sure she doesn't mind, in case a future child did the same. We discuss
the larger aspects of life and the minutia, having a plan, yet being
able to go with the flow (OK the go with the flow is just him, I
practically plan out my underwear a week in advance). We thing of the
what ifs, even the unlikely ones. We have the difficult discussions now,
so that we don't have to confront startling differences we never
realized were there when a situation arises. We may not always agree,
but we have learned where each other stands, and how to compromise where
we must. We dream together, but also confront the facts. I certainly am
no expert in relationships. Less so in marriage. But I'd like to think
I've learned a bit along the long and especially topsy turvy road to
where I am now.

If I could give advice to anyone getting married, or thinking about it, it would be this:

1. Don't ever, ever, ever assume. I don't care if you have to ask 10
different times in 10 different ways to make sure you understand each
other - not that you always agree, but that you know where each other
stands.

2. Every answer to the above doesn't have to be a yes or no. If you
don't know, say it. There are some questions I can answer with much more
certainty at 37 than I could have at 27. It's better for someone to
know you haven't made up your mind than to be surprised when you change
it - especially about something major.

3. Compromise is incredibly important and it's not always 50/50 in every
individual situation. In the end, it should about even out, but don't
keep exact score.

4. Sometimes, a topic may be so crucial that you don't feel you can
compromise. Pick your battles, but stand your ground when it matters
most. Otherwise, there's a high chance of bitterness and resentment down
the road.

5. Don't count on anything outside of the two of you to make your
marriage happy. If your marriage will only be happy if your life
together goes exactly as planned - ideal home, family exactly as you
imagined, jobs on the current course, etc - you need to reconsider. Your
partner should be enough for the marriage in and of themselves - not as
part of a larger plan that comes along with them. Because we know what
happens to the best laid plans.

6. Don't count on either of you changing, but understand that everyone
does in some ways. Meaning this: love and marry the person for who they
are in this moment, not for who you think they could be or who they used
to be. At the same time, everyone evolves and grows, or so you hope.
Shifts in each of you, with age and experience, are almost inevitable.
Allow each other some leeway, especially as the years progress. I
personally wouldn't want my spouse at 64 to be acting like they did at
24.

7. Sh*t is going to happen. This basically an absolute given. To you as a
person, to you as a couple. The things you never expected to bother you
will. Things you expected to worry about for years to come, you'll get
used to. When these things happen, know that you're in good company,
and try not to let it discourage you.

As I start dotting the i's and crossing the t's of the details for my
next wedding, I can feel a glaring difference between my first wedding
and this one. We have a total of two people in our bridal party, one on
each side. We're having a 15-ish minute ceremony at the same site as our
reception. There will be about 65 guests instead of 200, a good number
of whom are between the ages of 1 and 14. We're not doing a shower
(bridal, I am showering) or a registry. I personally don't care if
everyone - that's not in the actual wedding - shows up in their PJs.
What I do care about is that half of the time our discussions about
wedding plans dissolve into laughter. that we enjoy cooking dinner
together as we discuss our plans, that what we can't wait for most is
the opportunity to spend our lives together, whatever that may bring.

Monday, June 19, 2017

Last month, my great-niece Haidyn graduated from high
school and will be heading on to college.
She will be the first of her generation in our family to do so. I know that my parents (her
great-grandparents) would be very proud of her.
They were never able to attend college and, in my mother’s case even
finish high school. I know something
about how Haidyn must feel because, though it seems common place – even
compulsory – now, I was the first person on either side of my family to attend
college. It is a bridge that, once you cross over it, you can never go back.
The best analogy is that it is something like it must be for men and women who
go away to war. No description of it to
others is going to convey what it is like to those who have not been there. You leave not being the same person who
entered. It changes your world view; you
can no longer see things in the same way you once did.

While advice from a 71 year-old man is about as welcome as
dandelions in a suburban lawn, I’d like to offer a bit of it for any family
members of Haidyn’s generation that are planning to go college. The first is: go away to school. Education
is more than only books. Learning first
hand that there are people who see the world differently than you do – who talk
a little differently, dress differently, have a different background of
experiences, have value systems different from yours – is a part of the
education itself. Simply living in an
environment that is different from what you are used to broadens you, teaches you something. Seattle
doesn’t feel the same as Phoenix. There is a poem by Wallace Stevens called
“Anecdote in A Jar” in which he places a jar on a hill in Tennessee and instantly that jar becomes the
central reference point for everything we do. While our house, our home town,
our family may always be the emotional center of our universe, it is not the
physical center. Moving that glass to
another hill gives you perspective and that is not something that you get by
staying home or going to Florida
for spring break.

When the time for college came, I urged all of my children
to pick a place that was not in their geographic backyard. Pat was the first one and, in all candor, he
would have been very comfortable staying in Buffalo and going to UB. Instead, he went spent his first year at SyracuseUniversity because at the time he was
interested in going into journalism and the school had a good reputation. It was not the best experience. He had gone
to high City Honors in Buffalo
where the students were highly motivated. His friends went off to Harvard,
Stanford, etc. They were kids who were
bright but worked hard for what they got. What he learned at Syracuse was that the rest of the world was
not like this. They were interested in
partying, joining frats and drinking (some things haven’t changed). Having to
go to class was a minor annoyance for them.
Their parents paid for their education, so they didn’t care. Despite
good classes, Pat learned that Syracuse
wasn’t for him. He also learned that he
was more interested in political science and ended up transferring to Buffalo. Nevertheless, he learned something valuable.

In a somewhat different vein, Maya went to the University of Indiana and, her first reaction was an
incredulous “Everyone there is white!” On
the up side, she added that despite their counterparts in New Jersey, school officials and employees
at IU were actually friendly. While she
learned that she could probably never live in Indiana, she loved the school, and her
education and made long time friendships.

A second piece of advice that I would give is to take some
courses that you enjoy. You may not get
the chance again to try out some of the things that colleges and universities
give you a chance to do. I know. For
some people that sounds frivolous, like a luxury. I’ve worked with enough students over my life
time that have come from backgrounds where they thought they would never be
able to make it to college. They are
seeking an education to get a good job, to lift themselves and their families
out of poverty. They feel the imperative to stick to the game plan and pick up
skills and a certificate that can be cashed in for a better standard of
living. I respect that. Not everyone has a choice. But in that case,
what people are looking for is training, not education – and that is a whole
different ballgame. Education is
expansive, not one directional. My model
here is my son Eli. Eli was admitted to
the architecture program at the University
of Maryland. It is
extremely competitive and famous for the fact that during the junior and senior
years students basically sleep all night in the architecture studio. Nevertheless, his first couple of years he
experimented with classes that appealed to him like calligraphy and Italian. It’s made him a more interesting and empathetic
person and over a decade later, he is doing just fine as an architect with his
own firm. You have your whole life to
work, often in ways that give you little time to pursue things that really
interest you. Haidyn, I have no idea
what you are planning to study or what
your career plans are, but I say, take advantage of it while you can. Let
yourself grow.

My final wish for each of those of the next generation is
that if at all possible, you take a semester abroad – or spend some time living
in a foreign country. It combines both
of the first two experiences that I mentioned and adds a deeper third
dimension. Each of my children was lucky enough to be able to live for a while
in another country prior to having to get out and dive into their job or
career: Pat (Germany),
Maura (England), Melissa (Guatemala), Maya (Australia),
and Eli (Turkey).
Again, it is a fact of life that this is not possible for everyone. If you are already married and supporting a
family, it probably is not a possibility. On the other hand, when Maya took a
semester in Australia
with IU, aside from plane fare, it cost her no more than she would otherwise
have been paying. She got all of her
college credits and even ended up finishing college a semester early. While
going away to school is a big step towards allowing your perspective to
broaden, you are still to a large extent playing on home field - more or less
the same language, same laws, same religious and cultural values. Staying for some time in another country
allows you to be able to shift your prejudicial lenses some. We all have them
and, particularly in this era of Trump nativism, it is crucial to be able to
get outside and see what the world looks like from another vantage point. There is no better educator than travel.

Last week my grandson Connor graduated from middle school,
Maggie and Owen had their kindergarten graduation, and Daisie, the youngest of
all my grandchildren Face Timed with me and said Grandpa for the first
time. Chances are that by the time
Daisie is ready for college, I won’t be around any more. Those of us who have
been through college have frequently heard that in its origin the word educate
means to draw out. It is not about
cramming stuff in, but about bringing yourself out to a larger understanding of
the world. I am fortunate that all of my children value education – in the
broadest sense of the word, so I know that Connor, Maggie, Owen, Daisie and all
of the others will do fine without my advice.
It is comforting to know that. Still, one of the prerogatives of getting
older is the freedom to stick your nose in and say it anyway. Education
transforms. I can’t imagine who I would
be now, if I’d never had the opportunity for college.

Sunday, May 28, 2017

I’ve said on a number of occasions that I am glad that I
keep a journal. One of my projects over
the past few years has been to go back to the entries that I began keeping in
the early 1980’s and read forward. It
keeps me honest and prevents me from rewriting my personal history in a way
that makes me out to be the hero. (It is amazing what you forget.)

There are some nice surprises, too, and I came across one of
those when I was reading in my 1994 journal earlier this week. I discovered a poem that I had written and
forgotten for some reason. Perhaps my sensibilities were different at the time
and I thought it was incomplete, but on reading it again I really liked it and
decided to resurrect it.

The immediate impetus was that Maya had to do a report on Wiliam
Faulkner’s story “Barn Burning” and I had read the story to be able to help her
if she had any problems.

Barn Burning

After years of moving from place to place,

Of constant boils and pinworms from shared beds

Of welfare saying “college is not for you,” “wash dishes”

I understood Abner’s need to put the match to the hay.

Now I live in the white house

Am become one of the columns that is part and support.

It is difficult not to keep glancing out the window to see

If the barn is still standing

Or if perhaps sleep walking I have reverted

And handed it over,

To the flames it deserves.

From an aesthetic point of view, what I like about the poem
is that it achieves a sort of simplicity while at the same time, it seems to
me, still being to be able to speak to a reader in on terms that s/he can relate to
in relationship to their own lives. It
is a middle ground between merely reporting and trying to cram in unneeded
material, as I am prone to do.

More to the point, however, it serves to keep me
honest. After writing the blog about Dad
and the military the other day, I’m particularly mindful that, in Faulkner’s
famous words, “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.” More than ever, I’m convinced that is true.

Friday, May 26, 2017

This weekend is Memorial Day
weekend, and, as I out walking Grace, my thoughts turned to Dad. Though I have never thought of him as a
traditional military man, nevertheless, in the past few years I have thought
about his relationship to the military when this holiday has rolled
around. This morning, however, something
struck me that had never occurred to me before.
Perhaps it is because I am now looking at him from the vantage point of
someone who is 71 years old. I have
always known that Dad was in the Navy for twenty years. As a child, twenty years sounded like an
incredibly long time – a lifetime, really.
The thing that struck me this morning, though, was how terribly young
Dad was when he got out of the Navy after serving 20 years. He was only 38, Maya’s age!

Realizing
how young he was when he came out of the service was a jolt to me. Essentially, he had his whole life ahead of
him. It also put his life in a different
light for me. He was only 21 when he was
at Pearl Harbor and when he saw all of the
fighting from the ships. His tales of
being up in the Aleutian Islands (the foggiest place he had ever been) and in
Australia were really a young man’s tales. He was, in effect, much like those
young men who went away to Vietnam
or, how, to Iraq and Afghanistan,
and return, damaged, having witnessed the atrocities of war.

I bring
this up because it is commonplace now to hear of men (and now women) who return
to society and just cannot fit in and I wonder just how much psychological
damage was done to him. My first impulse
is to want to blame war and the military.
I want to ask the question, what kind of person would he have been, what
would he have made of himself, if the war had not come along.

There is a
list put out by WicomicoHigh School honoring all
of its attendees who served in the military.
On that list are Dad and four of his five brothers – John, Robert,
Peyton, and Colvin. (Byers could not join because he was legally blind.) I’d always assumed that because Dad was the
second youngest of the boys in his family, he had joined the military because
it was a family tradition, but over the past few years in doing family
research, I’ve discovered that was the first in his immediate family to join
and, for me, that puts a different perspective on things.

I ask
myself, what kind of life Dad would have had if he had not joined the Navy and,
before I put too much blame on the military, I have to look at the
context. Dad was orphaned by the time he
was eleven. He grew up with unofficial
foster parents. The town that he lived
in was a backwater town of small time fishermen and farmers who were trying to
make a living in the wake of changes wrought by the Civil War. None of his
brothers seems to have prospered. Alcoholism was a family curse, several of his
brothers were childless or had unhappy marriages. One committed suicide. Given
those circumstances, would Dad have turned out any differently?

Still,
Dad’s foster father seems to have been involved in education. Dad graduated
valedictorian from his class and, according to what he told me when I was
young, got a year’s scholarship to attend William and Mary – something unheard
of in his family. I distantly recall Dad’s saying that he did not attend
college because even with the scholarship he could not have afforded it. Was
Dad really joining the Navy simply as an act of patriotism or was it because he
saw it as his way out of a life that the rest of his family seemed consigned
to? We’ll never know the answer.

What I do
realize now is how terribly young he was even after serving twenty years in the
Navy. I can only repeat the cliché, “He
had his whole life ahead of him.” But
really, did he? Given the background
that he had, the damage done to him by the war and military culture, and the fact
that he now had five children to support, what real choices did he have? Free will is basically a fiction. Once the machinery of life is in motion, it
has a force of its own. I doubt any of
us now are where, at eighteen, we thought we would be. Paths lead to other
paths and where our footsteps finally end is anyone’s guess.

Monday, March 20, 2017

I know that many of you have all heard about the recent trip to Africa that Lora, Maya, Brian and I took in
bits and pieces, and perhaps seen a few of the pictures on FB or in other
places but after having been back for over a for a few weeks now, I thought I’d attempt to describe trip as a whole since it does not make total sense
out of context.

The trip began because Maya’s travel conference for ASTA
this year was in Nairobi
and Lora, Brian (Maya’s fiancée) and I all decided to take advantage of
it. The plan that we came up with was to
visit two places each in Kenya
and Tanzania. As exotic as Africa
sounds, there was no way this crew was going to rough it. In Kenya,
we stayed at the Stanley Hotel in Nairobi
and the Savona Camp in Masai Mara. In Tanzania, we stayed at the Mbuze Mawe
camp in the Serengetti and the Sopa Lodge at the Ngorongoro Crater. While the
everyday language of people in Kenya is Swahili, many people (especially those
in the service areas that deal with tourists like us) people speak English
since Kenya was under British rule for so long, so communication was pretty
easy for us there. Tanzania
was a bit tougher in terms of language.
Swahili is the main language and even though some people speak English,
even for most of those in the tourism industry, it is clearly a foreign
language. In preparing for the trip, we
had to think about what money we would use.
I was able to Kenyan shillings through our bank, but the Tanzanian
shilling is pretty unstable and not available out side of Tanzania, so we
ended up just using Kenyan and American money there.

We left from Newark airport
at 6:30 PM on the Feb. 23 and arrived in Nairobi,
the next evening at 9:50 PM. This
included about a 4 hour layover in Amsterdam and
was actually a longer trip than it appears since there is an 8 hour time
difference between NJ and Kenya. When we arrived at the airport, we ran into
our first (and really only unexpected obstacle) of the trip. The driver that
was supposed to be there to pick us up at the airport to take us to the hotel
never showed up. After going back and
forth with the company who was supposed to have sent him, we ended up taking a
cab, but it worked out well.

When Maya originally made inquiries about Nairobi, she got the response that it was
just a big, dirty city, but we found out otherwise. To begin with, we stayed at the Stanley
Hotel, the oldest hotel in Nairobi
and a throwback to the British Colonial days. It was absolutely beautiful and
the staff could not have been better. We’d come in a day early so we had hired
a driver to take us around. His name was
Martin and her was terrific. (In fact, all of the drivers/guides we had in Africa were excellent.)
One of the main points that we wanted to hit was the Sheldrake elephant
rescue. A few years back, Maya had given
Lora the gift of an elephant adoption. Her elephant, Kamu, had been at this
shelter, but had since been moved out.
It was an interesting experience to see how they rescued and cared for
the elephants.

In addition to the Sheldrake, we visited the TrainMuseum,
the National Museum of Kenya (which was a historical and cultural museum), a
marketplace and UhuruPark, which celebrated the birth of Kenya as a
nation. Martin also took us off the beaten track a bit to show us the
residential areas where the Kenyan people themselves lived. The driving in Kenya was among the craziest that I
have even seen. As Martin said, red lights mean nothing and if you decided to
stop at one, you are likely to be rear-ended. It was kind of a free for all,
but, unlike Philly, there was not a lot of horn-honking or shouting. The
conference itself was fraught with technical difficulties, but that did not
dampen our spirits.

To get to
our next location we had to take off from the small Wilson
airport in Nairobi. The waiting room was probably about the size
of the floor area in our house. In fact,
when they called us out on the tarmac to get on the flight, there were 10
people. The pilot discovered that two
more people were going to be coming on board, so they sent us all back in to wait
so that they could lessen the amount of fuel they were carrying and
redistribute some of the luggage weight on the plane. Unfortunately, because it was flying at such
a low level, Maya and I both got motion sickness.

As our plane descended, we saw zebras
by the side of the air strip. When our plane landed, we were met there by our
driver and guide, Edward (who was terrific) who had a an open air all-terrain
vehicle to take us to the next camp.
Edward met us with a lunch (though Maya was not feeling much like eating
at that point).

The area that we had landed is
called the Masai Mara. It is a huge game
park in Kenya. The land had all belonged to the Masai people
(who were semi-nomadic) at one point in time, and hence, the name. Edward drove us to the place we were going to
stay, the Sarova Mara Camp. On the way
there, we immediately knew that we were in the heart of Africa.
We saw zebra, water buck, impalas, wildebeest and even Masai herding their
cattle on our journey to the lodge. The
day was warm and the sun shining, even Edward told us that we had exceptionally
good luck in the amount of animals that we were seeing.

Although the Sarova Mara is called
a camp and we slept in “tents,” they were tents with all the features of a
hotel room. There was a dining hall with
buffet style dining containing some of the best food we have ever eaten, dishes
coming from all over the world. In fact,
the camp kept an organic garden where it raised and experimented with new
vegetables. We met the head gardener
there, James, who wanted me to try spider plant. A green-leafed plant that he was trying to
get onto the kitchen buffet. He asked if I wanted to try it for dinner – and I
did – so he had it cooked up for me specially.

Before I left, he gave me seeds from some of his medicinal
herbs.

The morning
of the next day, we got rose when it was still dark and drove out to where we
were going have a sunrise hot air balloon ride. The basket for the balloons
were larger than the one I had been in with my son Pat the previous year. They were divided into four sections, each
holding two people and one additional crew member. Lora, who hates heights, braved the trip and
actually began enjoying it after the first ten minutes or so. The balloon took us up over the Mara where we
saw elephants, lions, wildebeests, zebras, warthogs, and a variety of
antelope. At one point, the captain
lowered the balloon so we came right down to the top tree where a lion family was resting. The
balloon landed in an area that was set up for us to have a picnic lunch. A baboon was sitting watching us, waiting for
the scraps when we left. A herd of
zebras was also near us.

That
afternoon and most of the next day were spent on safari. During that time we
saw the animals I have mentioned above as well as hyenas, jackals,
hippopotamuses, mongooses, elands, dik diks, vultures, ostriches, hartebeest
and cape buffalo. One special treat was the spotting of African hunting dogs,
which are extremely rare and which are driver himself had not seen in several
years. I neglected to mention that all
of the roads were dirt, most of them a red clay and our driver, Edward,
frequently just cut paths across the terrain.
It rained almost every day. The most dramatic was the first night that
we were there. We were quite a ways from
the camp when the sky darkened and it began to rain. As it got dark and lighting was flashing,
Edward, rolled down the sides of the car. Because of flooding roads the
previous day, the roads were covered with water in some places and deeply
rutted in others, so that the swerving and bouncing was literally like
something out of an action move. Edward
was not allowed to turn on his lights because it would cause some of the
animals to freeze and get hit by the vehicles, so when the lightning flashed we
see zebra or Thompson’s gazelles crossing the roads right in front of us. At several points we found
ourselves in the midst of a herd of Masai cattle who had been herded
(illegally) into the park to graze at night.
When the ride ended all of us applauded.
It was definitely exciting – the best piece of driving I have ever seen.

On the
second day there, between safari outings, we visited a Masai Cultural
Village. In a sense, it was a tourist
trap, but in another sense, it was the real deal. The Masai traditionally
follow the growth of the grasses with their cattle. They make temporary houses
out of mud and cattle dung that are arranged inside of a circle surrounded by a
fence made of brush. Though I say that they take advantage of tourists, I mean
they charge you for everything they show you – though we were the only ones
there, so it was a personal tour including dancing, going into their houses, a
small market where they sell souvenirs, traditional fire starting, and the
bleeding of the cattle where they use the blood for food. They are incredibly
poor, their houses like smoky caves, so we did not mind having to give up the
money.

After three
days at Masai Mara, we left for our next destination. Edward drove us to the
landing strip that we had first come in on and the plane took us out. We landed at the Migori airport (smaller even
than Wilson)
where a driver and guide picked us up and drove us the rest of the way to the
Tanzanian border. There they helped us
to get our visas for Tanzania
and get through the border, and then we drove over the border to Tanzania and
headed for the Tarime air strip. The air
strip is just what it sounds like a field where planes landed the only
structure on the field was a restroom.

The next
plane was even smaller. We were the second of two stops and by the time we
arrived in the Serengetti, we were the only three people on the plane. When we landed at the air strip in the
Serengeti, we were met by our Tanzanian driver/guide, Basili who picked us up
in his jeep. He was young, gregarious
and – as we found out – extremely knowledgeable. Unfortunately, for Basili, he
faced the double issue of our being exhausted from the extensive travel and our
having seen a huge variety of animals on the Masai Mara, so we were a bit hard
to impress. Two animals that Edward had been unable to find were the leopards
and rhinos. On the way to our lodging at
Mbuzi Mawe Camp, Basili was able to spot two leopards in trees – though from
our vantage point, they were basically shadows.

The Mbuzi
Mawe camp was located in the northeast part of the Serengeti. Basili explained
to us that one of the reasons we were not seeing the big herds of animals that
people coming to the Serengetti expected to see is that the migration took a
huge circular path through Kenya and Tanzania, and that currently all of the
herds were down in the southern part of Serengeti. The Mbuzi Mawe camp was perched high atop an
outcropping of rocks with a view of the valley below. As with the Sarova camp,
our tents were tents in name only. There were, however, some differences. The
first was that if we were to go outside of our tents in the dark, we had to
call for someone from the staff to guide us because the ground was open to all
of the animals. In fact, the second evening that we were there, Maya and Brian
were guided back to their tent, only to see two cape buffalo and a water buck
next to it. The place also had small
rock hyraxes running all over, they are small guinea pig size animals that,
incredibly, are related to elephants.
Water was shut off periodically as well, as Brian found out once when he
was showering with his hair full of shampoo.
Here the food was served in courses, where you picked the selection that
you wanted from each course. Because this was Tanzania, communication was a bit
more difficult.

We were
only at Mbuzi Mawe for one full day. In the morning Basili picked us up early.
We saw a stream full of hippos and witnessed some of the social interaction
among them. We saw crocodiles as well. Basili was very knowledge about the
birds in the area, so in addition to the ostriches, we saw other large birds
like secretary birds, Kori bustards, and a number of eagles and vultures as
well as a lot of the colorful ones that lived in the thorn acacia trees that
the giraffes ate. In the Serengeti, we
had to stick to the main (dirt) roads so could not always get as close as we
wanted, but the streams that went through gave us a chance to see more animals
that hung around the water. That afternoon it poured. We barely made it back to camp before the
storms became almost violent.

The next
morning it was time to head off to our final lodging destination at the
Nogorongoro Crater with plans to stop along the way at Olduvai Gorge. Basili
suggested that we take a detour via a more southerly route to see if we could
see animals in the great migration. And
indeed we did. At one point, as far as
you could see wildebeests and zebra stretched from one horizon to the
other. Usually, the wildebeest charged
across the road in front of us but on one occasion, one was blocking the
road. The reason was that she was
protecting a young calf, which Basili said could only have been a few minutes
old and was still trying to learn to stay on its legs. We ate lunch at a place designated “Lion
Rock” because it was the spot where producers of the lion king had drawn their
inspiration from for the rock in the movie.

One of the
most remarkable things on our way to Oldevai Gorge once we left the Serengeti
was the incredible changes in landscape, they range from deserty scrub land to
lusher areas covered with trees. In the
dry areas we saw many Masai herders, but here they were herding sheep and
goats. Oldevai Gorge, of course, is the
area where Louis and Mary Leaky discovered some of the first remains of our
human-like ancestors (notably Zinjanthropus and Homo Habilis). We through the museum there and heard a short
talk, but simply standing staring out over the Great Rift Valley where all
excavations had been done was really memorable.

Our final
lodging was at the Sopa Lodge on the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater. It was
without question a luxury resort, created in a very throwback African inspired
style. The crater itself is a caldera, an extinct volcano that provides an
environment for almost all of the African animals that we had previously seen,
but these animals did not migrate. On our only full day there, we drove down
into the crater. The crater was rimmed and overhung with clouds. It had a
misty, other worldly appearance. We saw
a lake full of flamingos and – at long last – the endangered black rhinoceros
which survives in few other places in the world. We saw many of the animals we had seen
before, but a few new ones like a black-eared fox. Basili also pointed out some of the wild
plants that the people living in the area used for food. He helped me collect seeds for some wild
spinach.

Our final
day was a long one. We drove for several
hours through the various towns and villages of Tanzania to the city of Arusha.
There we caught a plane that flew us to Dar Es Salaam. We had an eight hour
wait at the Dar Es Salaam airport, which we had to exit because of changing to
an international flight, and were not allowed back in the airport until three
hours before the flight which took place at midnight. We bought a pack of cards
and hung out in the only available venue – a Burger King type restaurant called
Tasty Life. We bought a pack of cards and played cards to pass the time. Once
we were able to board our flight, it was another four hour stop in Amsterdam,
and then home.

Friday, February 17, 2017

On February 23, Dad will have been dead for twenty years.
Twenty years.

Before 9/11.

Before the genocide in the Middle East.

Long before the current Islamophobia.

At the brink of a new century when the future still looked
wide-open, it may have been a good time to die.

But it was also before he saw his grandchildren married.

It was before his great-grandchildren ever got the chance to
know him.

It was before m first book was published, the first edition
of my journal appeared and many of the events that constitute a large part of
my identity today had even taken place.

It was another world.

On the very few times occasions Dad’s sons and daughters
have had the chance to get together, our memories of him are all from different vantage points. Rather like looking
at a cubist painting, we all see different sides. We all draw different portraits with the
materials we have. I can remember him in
his Navy uniform, khaki for everyday and dress blues for special occasion. Ed
can recall times when Dad took him fishing – something I never
experienced. We all have our pieces of
the mosaic.

I’d like to hear from all of you who knew him. Is there a memory that you have of him that
you think the rest of us might not have?
Is there some particular recollection that is special to you for some
reason. If we can put some of the pieces
together, perhaps we can get a better picture of him, even if it does look a
bit Picasso-ish. I’m just going to record a fragment of a memory I have that I
don’t think the rest of you do. So I will start off. If you can leave yours in
the comments section, I think all of us will find them interesting.

My earliest memory of doing anything with Dad was when we
lived in El Sobrante. I was four years
old. At the time, we had a dog named
Toughy – a mongrel, I think. It was not a big dog, but it was aggressive. It pulled at the clothes on the line when Mom
hung them up and chased me around our yard.
I was terrified of it. Dad was a
generally kind person, but he had no room for complainers – whether about there
own situation or other people. (One of his favorite expressions was, if you
don’t have something good to say about somebody, don’t say anything.) I reacted like a typical four year old. Eventually my whining got the best of him, so
he told me to get in the car and he took the dog with us. El Sobrante was in a rural area and we drove
down a road along a field until Dad stopped the car and opened the door. The last I ever saw of Toughy was when he
disappeared into the tall grass.

There is one more bit to my memory of Dad and living in El
Sobrante, but it is even more fragmentary, so I’ll stop now.